I enjoyed shabu-shabu for a long time, I always thought of it as a healthy food. Little that I know that shabu-shabu is quite similar of that called chanko-nabe, a type of clay-pot dishes that has been associated to be the sumo wrestler’s diet.

It’s just surprising to know lots of veggies and little thin pieces of meat can bulk us up – well perhaps the noodle that does it. I am not quite sure really how this type of food come to be the feast of the sumo wrestlers, I always thought they would do lots of junk food such as burgers and chips.

Interested to find out more? Visit here for more sumo stew and here for more about nabemono (clay-pot) style dishes.

By the way this is a really fun thing to read – Tips on how to increase your body weight:

1. Skip breakfast. By depriving their bodies of food after eight hours of sleep, their metabolic rates stay low.

2. Exercise on an empty stomach. If their bodies have
no food, their metabolic thermostats are turned down even lower to conserve fuel.

3. Take a nap after eating. The Sumo secret for gaining weight is that, after eating, they sleep for at least four hours.

4. Eat late in the day. Going to bed with full stomachs means that their bodies must respond to the huge flood of nutrients with a rush of insulin, forcing their bodies to store some of it in the cells as fat instead of in the muscles and organs as nutrients.

5. Always eat with others in a social atmosphere. According to leading researchers, a meal eaten with others can be at least 44 percent larger and with 30 percent more calories and fat.